Krish (Ahaan Panday) is a hotheaded wannabe composer. Vaani (Aneet Padda) is an earnest wannabe journalist. We know this because Krish gets into a scuffle almost as soon as the film opens, and stomps off, leaving the chance of a lucrative gig behind. And Vaani (Aneet Padda) gets smirked at in her new workplace because she has no idea of how many Instagram followers she has as she has deleted her account.
That these two very different characters will clash, meet, and come together is ordained, because this is a Mohit Suri film. That it will have soulful ballad-y music all over it is also expected, for the same reason.
The question really is — given the director’s track-record, of which ‘Aashiqui 2’ has been the memorable hit — is ‘Saiyaara’ going to be ‘Aashiqui 3’? Can Suri hit a refresh button, and create a crackling contemporary romance?
First things first, the two newcomers, Aneet Padda who’s done some acting work before, and Ahaan Panday, show promise. The latter, Chunky Panday’s nephew, or should one call him Ananya’s cousin, gets early lines in which he calls out ‘nepo kids’ and their entitlement, getting it out of the way, telling us that it is very much a part of the current discourse. Ahaan’s delivery starts off unimpressive, and he needs more work on it, but he does manage to get into his part.
Dressed in regular chikan kurtas and jeans, Aneet is not as made-up as Yashraj heroines can be, even if her spiky eyelashes stay distractingly so through the film. But there’s a pleasing groundedness to her, even though I had to strain to hear some of her mumbled bits: staying natural doesn’t mean that you eat your words.
What’s nice is that the two appear invested in each other, and there’s spark between them, something that Bollywood love stories find hard to create, the leading pair coming off more annoyingly fraternal than anything else.
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But the freshness of this jodi is weighed under by Suri’s familiar treatment which feels dated, the same old teary sequences laden by emo lyrics: what starts as passionate soon becomes cloying. Here are the wounds that Krish lives with, his childhood blighted by an alcoholic father, who gets a couple of redeeming lines. There is Vaani, with major trouble looming over her horizon, a past relationship depicted clunkily. The plot tries to touch upon the socially-mediated aspects of a popular rockstar’s life, but gets over-run by the flailings of faceless band members, except for the one who gets all the lines, as well as some prettified portions shot by the sea and in the mountains.
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Result: what could have been a bitter-sweet love story, and that’s what the film is clearly going for, is done in by its dialogue-heavy, inconsistent bits.
Saiyaara movie cast: Aneet Padda, Ahaan Panday, Geeta Agarwal, Rajesh Kumar, Varun Badola
Saiyaara movie director: Mohit Suri
Saiyaara movie rating: 2 stars
